THE BATTLE WITH THE WILDERNESS BEGINS.
A roaring fire of logs upon the wide hearth, logs built up into walls
and roof, logs wrought into rough furniture of tables and stools--here,
within the emigrant's hut, the all-encompassing forest had but changed
its shape. Man had but pressed it into his service; from a foe it had
become a friend; the wooden realm paid tribute, being subjugated.
The still life of the cabin was rude enough. No appliances for ease,
not many for comfort, as we in England understand the words. Yet the
settler's wife, sitting by her wheel, and dressed in the home-spun
fruits thereof, had a well-to-do blooming aspect, which gaslight and
merino could not have improved; and the settler's boy, building a
miniature shanty of chips in the corner, his mottled skin testifying to
all sorts of weather-beating, looking as happy as if he had a toyshop
at his command, instead of the word being utterly unknown in his
experience; and the baby, rolled up in the hollowed pine-log, slept as
sweetly as if satin curtains enclosed its rest. Back to Sam Holt's mind
recurred words which he knew well: 'A man's life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things that he possesseth.'
The woman rose and curtsied. She had not been accustomed to make that
respectful gesture for a long time back; but something in the appearance
of the strangers half involuntarily constrained it.
'I needn't ask if you're Canadian born,' said Mr. Holt; 'you've the
manners of the old country.'
'My father and mother were from Wiltshire, and so be I,' she answered,
setting back her wheel, and looking gratified at the implied commendation.
'But that be so long ago as I scarce remember.'
'And she made amends by marrying me,' said the settler, entering from
the outer door, and latching it behind him. 'Mary, get the pan and fix
some supper quick. Them duck I shot won't be bad. You see, I've been
expectin' you along rather;' and he flung down an armful of wood, which
he began to arrange with architectural reference to the back-log and
fore-stick.
'Expecting us?' exclaimed Robert Wynn.
'You're for lot fifteen in ninth concession, township of Gazelle? Wall,
so I guessed; for I heard from Zack Bunting who lives at the "Corner,"
that it was sold by Landenstein; and I calc'lated you'd be along
presently:' and he finished his fire-building by a touch with his foot,
which appeared to demolish much of his labour, but in reality conduced
to his object of intensifying the heat and blaze.
'Benny,' to the boy, who had sat on the ground staring at the
new-comers, 'go tell your mother to be spry.' The little fellow went
accordingly, by the side door through which she had disappeared a few
minutes previously; and the Irish servant, planting himself on the
vacated spot with his toes to the fire comfortably, commenced to erect
of the child's chips a two-storied mansion.
'You've got a good slice of bush there, back from the pond; though the
cedars will be troublesome, I guess.'
'Oh, we bargained for the cedars,' said Sam Holt. 'There's enough to
clear without laying an axe to _them_ for many a day.'
'It's all the doing of that spring creek, running through the middle of
the lot, as fine a water-privilege as ever I see; but the cedars are
where it gets to the pond. If the bed was deepened down below, it's my
opinion the swamp would be drained.'
'You seem to know the ground well,' said Robert, with interest.
'I guess I ought to, that have shot over it before ever a blazed line
ran through them woods. We was farthest west once, but that's over by a
long spell; the neighbourhood's pretty thick now, and the "Corner" will
be a town shortly.'
'Well, if this is a thick neighbourhood, I should like to know his idea
of a thin one,' said Arthur, _sotto voce_, to Sam Holt. 'We have met
only this house for miles.'
'Oh, they ain't many miles, only you thought they was, cos' I guess you
ain't used to the stumps,' put in the settler. 'The back lot to ours, of
the same number, is took by a Scotchman, and last week I run a blazed
line across to his clearing through the bush; for you see I'm often
away, trapping or still-hunting, and Mary here thought she'd be a trifle
less lonesome if she had a way of going over the hill to her friend
Mrs. Macpherson. The other way is round by the "Corner," which makes it
five miles full; but now Benny can run across of a message, by minding
the marks; can't you, my lad?'
'Yes, father,' answered the boy proudly. 'And I can chop a blaze myself,
too.' Benny was not much taller than an axe handle.
Arthur looked from the child round at the wife, who was often left alone
in this solitude of woods, and longed for the slender chain of a scarred
line of trees between her and some other woman. A healthy, firm outline
of face, wholly unacquainted with nervousness; quiet, self-reliant,
hard-working; perhaps of a Dutch type of character. Her husband was a
sturdy broad-set man, with lithe limbs, and quick senses looking out
from his clear-featured countenance: he had a roving unsubdued eye,
befitting the hunter more than the farmer.
'I wouldn't desire,' said the latter, seating himself on the end of
the table, while his wife superintended a pan of frizzling pork on the
coals--'I wouldn't desire, for a feller that wanted to settle down for
good, a more promising location than yourn at the Cedars. The high
ground grows the very best sorts of hard wood--oak, sugar maple, elm,
basswood. Not too many beech, or I'd expect sand; with here and there a
big pine and a handful of balsams. The underbrushing ain't much, except
in the swamp.'
'I'm glad to hear that,' said Mr. Holt, 'for the fall is going fast, and
we'll have to work pretty hard before snow comes.'
'So I'm thinkin'. But _you_ ain't going to settle: you haven't the cut
of it: you're settled already.'
'How do you know?'
'Oh, you didn't listen as they did,' pointing his thumb towards the
Wynns, 'when I fell to talkin' of the ground. I know'd my men at once.
Nor you didn't stare about as they did, as if the house and fixins was a
show at a copper ahead.'
'You must excuse our curiosity,' said Robert politely.
'Surely; every man that has eyes is welcome to use 'em,' replied the
backwoodsman bluntly. 'We ain't got no manners in the bush, nor don't
want 'em, as I tell Mary here, when she talks any palaver. Now, wife,
them pritters must be done;' and he left his seat on the table to pry
over her pan.
'Then take the cakes out of the bake-kettle, will you?' said Mary; 'and
if them ducks be raw, 'tain't my fault, remember.' She was evidently a
woman of few words, but trenchant.
Thus warned, her husband did not press the point, but took the stewing
fowl under his own care, displaying a practical experience of cookery
won in many a day of bush life.
'These duck was shot on your pond, stranger; if you be a good hand
with the gun, you'll never want for fresh meat while that water holds
together. The finest maskelonge and pickerel I ever see was hooked out
of it.'
Arthur's face brightened; for the sportsman instinct was strong in him,
and he had been disappointed hitherto by finding the woods along their
track empty of game.
''Cos the critters have more sense than to wait by the road to be
shot,' explained the backwoodsman, as he dished up his stew--a sort of
hodgepodge of wild-fowl, the theory of which would have horrified an
epicure; but the practical effect was most savoury.
Now the boy Benny had never in his small life seen any edifice nobler
than a loghouse on the ground-floor; and the upper storey which Mr.
Callaghan had built with his chips seemed to him as queer a phenomenon
as a man having two heads.
'Well, only think of that!' exclaimed Andy; 'the boy doesn't know what a
stairs is.'
'And how should he?' asked the father, rather sharply. 'He ha'n't seen
nothin' but the bush. One time I took him to Greenock, and he couldn't
stop wonderin' what med all the houses come together. For all that, he
ha'n't a bad notion of chopping, and can drive a span of oxen, and is
growin' up as hardy as my rifle--eh, Benny?'
'He cut all the wood I wanted while you were away last time, Peter,'
chimed in the mother. So the strangers saw that the principle which
leads parents to bore their unoffending visitors with copybooks and the
'Battle of Prague,' is applicable to backwood accomplishments also.
As a general rule, conversation does not flourish in the bush. The
settler's isolated life is not favourable to exchange of thought, and
events are few. Silence had fallen upon the woman in this house to a
remarkable degree, and become incorporated with her. She went about her
work quietly and quickly, speaking but five sentences in the course of
the evening. The last of these was to notify to her husband that 'the
skins was ready.'
'We've no beds,' said he, with equal curtness. 'You must try and
be snug in a wrap-up on the floor to-night. More logs, Benny;' and
additional wood was heaped down, while he brought forward a bundle of
bear and buffalo skins, enough to blanket them all. Mary had already
picked up the pine-log containing her baby, and taken it into the other
room out of sight, whither her husband followed; and Benny crept into a
sort of bed-closet in the far corner.
All night long, through the outer darkness, came a sound as of a
limitless sea upon a lonely strand. Robert knew it for the wind
wandering in the forest, and even in his home dreams it mingled a
diapason, until the early sun gleamed through the chinks of the door,
and flung a ray across his face. Simultaneously the poultry outside and
the infant within woke up, commencing their several noises; and the
farmer, coming out, built up the fire, and hung down the bake-kettle to
heat for the breakfast bread. Then he invited his company to 'a wash'
at the spring; and, leading them by a wood path beside the house, they
came to a pellucid pool fed by a rivulet, which, after flowing over its
basin, ran off rapidly to lower ground. Here Benny was flung in by his
father, though the water was quite deep enough to drown him; but he
dived, and came out buoyant as a coot.
'Now go fetch the cow, my lad, and help your mother to fix breakfast,
while we walk round the clearing.' But this morning she had an efficient
coadjutor in the person of Andy Callaghan, who dandled the baby while
the cakes were being made, his sharp eye learning a lesson meantime;
and milked the cow while the child was being dressed; and cut slices
of pork, superintending its frizzling while the room was being set to
rights. Three or four attempts to draw the silent woman into conversation
were utterly abortive.
'Troth, an' you're a jewil of a wife,' remarked the Irishman, when
everything seemed done. 'I'll engage I won't have the good luck to get
one wid her tongue in such good ordher.'
Mary Logan laughed. 'It be from having no folk to talk with,' she said.
'An' a sin an' a shame it is for himself to lave you alone,' rejoined
Andy, looking complimentary. 'Now I want to know one thing that has been
botherin' me ever since I came in here. What's them strings of yallow
stuff that are hangin' out of the rafthers, an' are like nothin' I see
in all my days, 'cept shavin's?'
'Sarce,' answered Mrs. Logan, looking up; 'them's sarce.'
'I'm as wise as ever,' said Andy. Whereupon she went to the compartment
which acted as store-closet, and, bringing out a pie which had a wooden
spoon erect in it, proffered him a bit.
'Ah,' quoth Mr. Callaghan with satisfaction, 'that's English talk; I
know what that manes well. So ye calls apples "sarce!" I've heerd tell
that every counthry has a lingo of its own, an' I partly b'lieve it now.
But throth, that way of savin' 'em would be great news intirely for the
childer at home!'
So thought Robert Wynn afterwards, when he found the practice almost
universal among the Canadians, and wondered that a domestic expedient so
simple and serviceable should be confined to American housekeepers.
'Peter planted an orchard the first thing when we settled, and maples be
plenty in the bush,' said Mrs. Logan, with unusual communicativeness.
'Yes, ma'am,' rejoined Andy suavely, and not in the least seeing the
connection between maple trees and apple-pie. 'I wondher might I make
bould to ax you for one of them sthrings? they're sich a curiosity to
me.' And he had the cord of leathern pieces stowed away in one of the
provision hampers before the others came in from the fields.
There they had seen the invariable abundance and wastefulness of
bush-farming; no trace of the economy of land, which need perforce be
practised in older countries, but an extravagance about the very zigzag
fences, which unprofitably occupied, with a succession of triangular
borderings, as much space as would make scores of garden beds. 'Nobody
cares for the selvedges when there is a whole continent to cut from,'
remarked Sam Holt, in a sententious way he had.
A yield of from twenty to five-and-twenty bushels per acre of wheat, and
two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes, were mentioned by the farmer
as an average crop. His barns and root-house were full to repletion.
Nothing of all this property was locked up: a latch on the door
sufficed.
'I suppose, then, you have no rogues in the bush?' said Robert.
'Where everybody's as well off as another, there ain't no thievin',' was
the pithy answer. 'A wolf now and then among our sheep, is all the robbers
we has.'
After breakfast the bullocks were yoked afresh.
'I guess as how you've stumps before you to-day, a few,' said the farmer,
coming out axe on shoulder. ''Tain't only a blaze up beyond your place
at the Cedars, and not much better than a track of regulation width from
the "Corner" to there. Only for that job of underbrushing I want to get
finished, I'd be along with you to-day.'
He and his boy Benny walked with the travellers so far as their way lay
together. The wife stood at the door, shading her eyes with her hand,
till the lumbering waggon was lost to view round the edge of the woods.
The day's journey was just a repetition of yesterday's, with the stumps
and the mud holes rather worse. The 'Corner' with its single sawmill and
store, offered no inducement for a halt; and a tedious two miles farther
brought them to 'hum.'